Wednesday 8 August 2012

Japanese chain maille bracelet & ring... creative procrastination at its finest

It's hot hot hot. I have typing out the yin yang still to do and I am blind with eyestrain. Off to the eye doc tomorrow morning, and that little problem should be resolved with new lenses in, oh, three weeks or so.

Good news: today I shipped my very first sale of turquoise beads off my long-neglected website. Thank you, Kaye! I have to start taking more pictures and posting new items. The prices are old -- I bought this turquoise three and four years ago -- and I checked a few places online. Wow, has it gone up. I did order myself some Fox Mine turquoise -- really looking forward to seeing that -- along with a pile of other cool stuff including some black tourmaline beads for a commission. That will be combined with some raw black tourmaline. My customer for this says black tourmaline conveys some serious power. Stay tuned for pix.

Japanese chain maille ring and bracelet. Would this be called 3 in 3? I forget. I'm sure someone will correct me. I had bought these copper rings mainly because they are so purty and shiny, and I was procrastinating, stacking them up and watching them flippety flop over, rather than sitting tight and square like more usual chain maille designs and thought they'd make a nice Japanese style chain maille ring, comfortable to wear due to generalised floppiness.



I have a customer in mind for this, hence the 9.75 size: note the tiny jump rings I used in the top photo (at about 7:45) to reduce the size to pretty much exactly 9.75 on the ring mandrel.

Then I thought a necklace or choker would be a cool idea, and a mindless (I'm so easily entertained) hour or so later... I realised I was going to run out of rings long before I got to 20 or 22 inches, so I stopped at an 8-inch bracelet. I'd forgotten how silky soft metals can be.




I'm working on a new "leaf" style of hammered clasp, plus it's a little more guyish than the usual curvy, twirly designs I do, and I'm hoping that the centre bit will prevent the jump ring from working its way loose all the time like it tends to do in the standard curvy style of hammered clasp. This still isn't quite what I picture in my mind -- I'd prefer sharper bends rather than soft curves -- but I'm working on that.

Thanks for looking!

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